Number of the Month

September 2003

The new inquisition
tightens its grip

The organised assault on doubters about
the true religion is now reaching an extraordinary pitch. Last month we remarked
on the double attack in The Times on Philip Stott, who had inadvertently
been allowed to voice dissent in its Thunderer column. Even more ferocious was
the aggression directed at Willie
Soon and Sallie Baliunas, who had the temerity to introduce scientific
evidence into the discussion of the global warming dogma. The targets for
character assassination included Chris de Freitas, the editor of Climate
Research that published the paper, who was criticized for "having
failed in his responsibilities of quality control", even though the paper
passed an extensive peer-review process.

The self satisfied arrogance of the likes of Michael Mann, who appears to be
orchestrating the campaign, is really quite breathtaking. Talk about the pot
calling the kettle black! This international coterie, if not by fraud certainly
by subreption, have foisted a spurious theory on an unsuspecting world, accuse
anyone who begs to differ of being unscientific.

The real anger, however, is directed at that notorious apostate, Bjorn
Lomborg. For he is a believer. In fact, he will believe almost anything
(celery and passive smoking cause cancer etc.) but he dares to question the
sanity of committing economic suicide in the name of a treaty that would not
make any difference even if the myth were true. He literally was subjected
to an inquisition, though not (yet) actually broken on the wheel, but the
shameful process of persecution has been continued by his scientific
compatriots. Now an "independent"
panel of "scientists" has decreed his work to be
"unscientific". As it happens it is, but not for the reasons they
give.

The way that "science" has congealed since the heady days when
Einstein turned it upside down with his first six papers is one of the great
tragedies of human history. While the New Right were basking in the glory
of the days of Reagan and Thatcher, the new left were quietly burrowing
into the very entrails of western society and finally emerged, Alien like,
triumphant as the New Establishment. They turned their backs on the likes of
Einstein and embraced a new eco-theology. They also turned history back half a
millennium.

In 1483 Tomas de Torquemada became the inquisitor-general for most of
Spain. He was responsible for establishing the rules of inquisitorial
procedure and creating branches of the Inquisition in various cities. He
remained the leader of the Spanish Inquisition for fifteen years and is
believed to be responsible for the execution of around 2,000 Spaniards. The
Catholic Church and the Pope attempted to intervene in the bloody Spanish
Inquisition but were unable to wrench the extremely useful political tool from
the hands of the Spanish rulers.

The Inquisition was run procedurally by the inquisitor-general who
established local tribunals of the Inquisition. Accused heretics were
identified by the general population and brought before the tribunal. The were
given a chance to confess their heresy against the Catholic Church and were
also encouraged to indict other heretics. If they admitted their wrongs and
turned in other aggressors against the church they were either released or
sentenced to a prison penalty. If they would not admit their heresy or indict
others the accused were publicly introduced in a large ceremony before they
were publicly killed or sentenced to a life in prison. Around the 1540s the
Spanish Inquisition turned its fire on the Protestants in Spain in an attempt
to further unify the nation. The Spanish Inquisition's reign of terror was
finally suppressed in 1834.

The New Inquisition operates much more subtly. It uses its domination of the
media to undermine heretics and detach them from funding and publication. It promotes
crude smear campaigns designed to turn sceptics of the religion into pariahs.
Its motto is Might is right.

Correspondence received

Dear Sir

It is outrageous that you continue to give space to the disgraceful
outpourings of phlogiston deniers. As the sole media outlet to give due
prominence to the formation of the PRU you
have a duty to ensure that your coverage does not air the views of the
unscientific minority who fail to accept the truth about the dangers that
phlogiston poses for our society. Fortunately, I am able to give you the
names of five independent academics who are willing to review your material
before it is published. A search of your web site confirms that you have given
due prominence to the phlogiston disaster, so it is reasonable to assume that
the lapse is only temporary. I look forward to rectification of this appalling
situation.

Yours faithfully

Dr Marmaduke Throttle

Director of Research, PRU

Catch 22

Apropos of the funny little ways of The Establishment a
nice little example of the employment of Catch 22 appears in a piece in The
Times of September 2nd, CJD:
the theory that no one wants to hear. It goes like this:

(a)You cannot have resources and funding because you have not carried out
follow-up tests.

(b)You cannot carry out follow-up tests because you don’t have resources
and funding.

As regular readers will know the CJD story has been an
enduring saga of official incompetence. Just look at what Number Watch
was saying two years ago. Then scroll
down to We are all doomed! Note especially this
comment

Only a nasty old cynic would suggest that a
curve other than the exponential could be fitted to these data. He might, for
example, posit a wholly random (Poisson) distribution, perhaps modified by
failures of diagnosis in the earlier years; or even a trend that was rising
and is now falling. A data set of only about a hundred deaths in six
years lends itself to almost any interpretation. As with other areas of modern
academic life (such as climate research) a major factor is possibly where the
next grant is coming from. A rising trend means future employment.

According
to the projection, we should be heading for 45 deaths this year. They had better
hurry as we have had just 12 so far. Other projections were in the thousands.

The
hypothesis put forward by the non-person, Professor Alan Ebringer, might well be
wrong, most are, but unless it can be proven to be non-viable it should be
tested, at a cost negligible compared with funds at the disposal of DEFRA (which
it must be remembered had to change its name from MAFF in attempt to cover up
the trail of cock-ups that it had left in its wake).

Contrast
this with the fortunes of Professor Stan
Prusiner, who was awarded a Nobel Prize with indecent haste, also based on
an unsubstantiated hypothesis. He was also able to establish a nice little
earner in consequence.

The
committee responsible for the whole fiasco (SEAC) stand as a monument to
scientific and administrative incompetence at the highest level. How often have
we been able to echo Magnus Linklater’s final words on this story?

Another promising lead will have been
stifled by the dead hand of this country’s scientific establishment. And
another vital area of medical science will have gone the same way as so many
others before it: across the Atlantic.

ITMA

When Junkscience.com
elected to use the title Mann of course
for the latest effusion from the doyen of global warmers, it stirred a memory in
an oldie. ITMA was the acronym that had great meaning for a former generation of
Britons. It stood for“It’s
that man again”. Originally it was a sobriquet for Adolph Hitler, coined
by the cinema newsreels, but it was adopted by a comedian, Tommy Handley, for a
series that ran through the war and on to 1948. It had a brilliant cast,
including the likes of Maurice Denham, who went on to become a revered actor of
stage and screen. It kept up the moral of the British throughout the war and the
desolation of the post-war socialist government.

The frequency with which Mann, and his acolyte, Professor
Philip Jones of the CRU, grab the headlines merits resuscitation of this
acronym, though it has been usurped by all sorts of upstarts (try a search).
Their latest scam
is a delightful example of the genre. Don’t you just love these two?

They say the
Vikings' voyage from Iceland to Greenland in 980 AD was a quest for land, not
for a warmer climate.

They also
reinterpret the fact that the river Thames used to freeze over more often,
saying the design of the original London Bridge affected the river and made it
freeze more easily.

Don’t buy a fridge, buy a bridge!

What next? Rewriting the laws of thermodynamics? You would
not put it past them.

Footnote

Oh dear! It seems further explanation is needed. The first of
the above statements is an example of the form of non sequitur known as
the Straw Man (appropriate for men clutching at straws). It is a form of
misdirection based on contradicting an argument that nobody put up in the first
place, or if they did they are as barmy as these authors. The number of
different ways of confirming the warm period that gave rise to the name
Greenland is considerable. Even entomologists have been able to track the rise
and fall of Eric the Red's colony by examining the remains of flies, the
dominant types of which accurately follow temperature.

The second demonstrates a lack of feel for magnitudes that
betrays a poor scientific training. The latent heat of melting of water is
enormous (334kJ/kg). Without doing any calculations it should be obvious that to
freeze a river like the Thames at London, even if it were
stationary, you need to remove at least gigaJoules of heat energy.
This can only be done by sustaining temperatures of well below 0oC
for a very long period. The idea that a negligible structure like a bridge, by
some mechanism unnamed (aerodynamic?) could contribute is absurd. It might be
claimed that the old bridge impeded the flow until it was demolished in 1832. If
so, where did the water go? Across London? The flow of water is subject to the
law of continuity. If the flow is insufficient at a constriction, then the head
builds up until it is sufficient.

If
you don't believe the science, try the art. By ironic coincidence The Times
of September 3 published an article The
view's great from up here which included The Thames during the Great Frost
by Jan Griffier the younger. Anyone who looks at this and still thinks a
structure like a bridge can make a difference is also as barmy as these authors.

It is appropriate to mention Langmuir's laws of bad science
(given in full in July) of which the fourth and
fifth are:

4.Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested.

5.Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the
spur of the moment.

The lengths to which the eco-theologians will go to deny such
well documented phenomena as the Mediaeval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age
are reminiscent of the way the Church denied the heliocentric cosmology and
persecuted those who promoted it.

And these are the people who accuse everyone else of being
fringe scientists!

The age of cancer

What is the worst of woes that wait
on age?
What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?
To view each loved one blotted from life's page,
To be alone on Earth as I am now
Byron, "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage"

Charts provided on a new
site in our links illustrate a theme that will be familiar to readers of Sorry,
wrong number!; that cancer, with a few tragic exceptions, is a disease of
old age. In fact, the charts understate the case, because they do not take into
account the diminishing cohort due to the attrition of death. To remove this
distortion you need to plot the mortality, which is obtained by dividing
the height of each bar by 100 minus the sum of all the bars to the left of it.

There are several consequences to the exponential shape of the cancer
mortality curve. Most important is the fact that, as we remove other causes of
death, the cancer rate must increase. This is a manifestation of The
independence fallacy: since everybody dies, the total number of deaths must
add up to 100%. It is a mainstay of the cancer industry that incidence of the
disease is mysteriously increasing, whereas there is no mystery at all. The
industry was launched on the back of a big lie, that 90% of all cancers are
environmental in origin. If we look across the animal kingdom we see that,
disagreeable though the thought might be, cancer is part of a natural process.
Seriously wrong numbers, such as the 400,000 Americans dying from tobacco, are
frequently obtained by such fiddles as ascribing "premature" deaths to
80 and 90-year olds.

Evolution, if you will pardon a mild flirtation with the pathetic
fallacy, has to make compromises in order to maximise the probability of
genes reproducing themselves. In order for the young to prosper through a potent
immune system, the old have to put up with arthritis. In the wild, the old,
having successfully reproduced, serve no useful purpose in the survival of the
selfish gene, and they usually end up as part of the food chain. In the extreme
(salmon, for example) the process of reproduction is actually a cause of
death. Human societies have taken to preserving the tribal elders, partly
because the evolution of speech has made their accumulated wisdom a survival
asset, an asset modern society thinks it well can do without (New Labour, Young
Labour!).

It is, of course, only humane (and also in our individual self interest) to
do everything in our power to combat this fearful adversary. That will done by
the painstaking process of scientific research in areas such as cell biology.
The excesses of environmentalism and epidemiology are merely an elaborate
sideshow that distracts from main purpose

Tales of the undead

Those who wrote off the number
watcher's old friend Michael Meacher
when the British Government at last divested itself of this permanent
embarrassment wrote too soon. Back he came with a bang and his most outrageous
claim ever. Mick Hume summarised it in a piece in The Times of September 8:

Am I being paranoid, or is there a plot afoot to
spread conspiracy theories about absolutely everything? If there is, Michael
Meacher must be in on it. Having informed us that GM food is a corporate
conspiracy, the former Environment Minister now claims that America’s war on
terrorism is really a “political smokescreen” concealing a secret
right-wing plot.

Meacher suggests that the Bush Administration knew about the September
11 terrorist attacks but allowed 3,000 Americans to be killed in order to
create “a convenient pretext” for the Washington hawks’ pre-planned wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq. The “overriding motive” for this alleged
conspiracy was to achieve US domination of the globe and its oil supplies......

Relatively few, however, seem to have noticed how our master of his
brief really had the last laugh. The ever vigilant Christopher
Booker was one of them. For it was our old friend who loaded the shells that
enabled Mad Margot and her fellow zealots to
blow a hole through one of Britain's few successful manufacturing industries.
The Reach Directive, which comprises a monstrous 1,200 pages of the most opaque
EU gobbledygook, threatens the very existence of a £34 billion a year
enterprise. Meacher's replacement, the hapless Margaret Beckett, finds herself
trying to fend off the worst of this economic disaster, despite the
embarrassment that it was her own Government that launched it.

It would be a serious error to underestimate the scale of this disaster. Just
look at one example quoted by Booker:

The consequences can be see from how the directive would impact on
Gabriel-Chemie, an Austrian-owned firm independently run by Greg Hammond in
Paddock Wood, Kent, with 50 employees. Mr Hammond's expertise is producing new
colours for plastics, for customers such as Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury's,
Tesco and Boots. Each week he may be asked to come up with 50 new colour
compounds, often used in small quantities for just one specific purpose. His
competitive edge lies in his chemical formulations, which remain commercially
secret. Under REACH he would not only have to register each of 250-odd
chemicals he uses, but also publicly disclose each formulation, so they would
be instantly accessible to potential competitors, such as those from China
already active in his market.Like thousands of others, the more Mr Hammond assesses the implications of
Reach the more alarmed he becomes. Not only will he have to hire extra staff
to cope with the paperwork. His greatest fear is that, by laying bare his
trade secrets, his business could soon vanish overseas, closing him down,
because not the least absurd feature of Reach is that it will not apply to
products imported into the EU. By imposing such colossal costs one of the
chief centres of the world's chemical industry, the EU could thus be writing
its suicide note.
No country has more to lose than Britain, whose chemical business has in
recent years been growing at six times the rate of Germany's, its nearest
European competitor. But the fact that this directive stems from a UK
initiative means there is little our Government can now do to prevent the slow
destruction of our last world-beating manufacturing industry. How those
Chinese must be laughing.

Where Adolph Hitler failed, our Michael has succeeded, without even stirring
from his desk.

Footnote (J Arbona)

After WWII, the litany was like this:
"The Roosevelt Administration knew about the December 7 attack on Pearl
Harbor, but allowed 3,000 Americans to be killed in order to create “a
convenient pretext” for the Washington hawks to enter the war against Japan
and Germany."

The more things change the more they stay the same.

Correction. Sorry wrong number! Apparently the number
above should be 1,200 pages. So that's all right. Masochists can read all about
it here.

The Ratchet again

A retired meteorologist was quoted recently as saying "A month without a
record would be a record". With the whole of the media part of the global
warming conspiracy, however, only one type of record is allowed to be known to
the public.

The local media was informed of the new
record and it will be available here.
The records are also published in the NT Monthly Weather Review.
However, had Darwin recorded a hot temperature record, it would have been
proclaimed loudly from the rooftops of all the major media, announcing the
coming of the greenhouse Armageddon.

But for a cold record? Only the local
media takes interest or needs to know.

Here in rural Wiltshire, we are still sore that this year's -10oC
frost that killed off our "hardy" winter vegetables is still a local
secret.

Power games

There has been some correspondence on power cuts, possibly due to an article
in Metro (Facing blackout, September 10) that mentioned Number
Watch. A portmanteau reply in the form of an FAQ has been posted here.

Announcement

It has come to our attention that a certain university in
the USA has attempted to create a nice little earner by providing expensive kits
that allow school kids to be inducted into politically correct science. The
programme goes by the name of SEPUP.

Be it known that this programme is but a pale and cheap
imitation of one created by the Metropolitan University of Nether Wallop – the
Course Of Creative Knowledge and Understanding Programme. Do not be misled by
unsatisfactory substitutes that fail even to mention the importance of
phlogiston, to quote just one inadequacy. So, if you cannot find a creative way
to dissipate the funds of your school, why not order an expensive kit from
COCKUP.

The inquisition strikes
again

If
anyone thought that this month’s opening piece was an exaggeration, they
should read Michael Fumento’s account
of the fate of two scientists who dared to publish results that re-established
the harmlessness of second hand smoke. This was, of course, known to anyone who
had actually read the original EPA so-called meta-study and had cut through the
blatant statistical frauds. All the usual suspects turned up, including the old Number
Watch favorite, Clive Bates, to demand the impaling of the authors and
publishers who perpetrated this heresy and sacrilege.

And then there's
hypochondria

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said:
"one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When
I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've
believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Through the looking-glass

At last an academic has revealed the nature of the
disease that has marred the lives of so many number watchers. The Times,
in its Debate
page of September 17th, included discussion of the latest trendy
psychological theory, but in the course of the discussion, Dr David Cook of the
Department of Chemistry at Sheffield came up with an identification of the
affliction that many of us have had to live with:

Dysbelievia

I AM afraid that reading Nigel Hawkes’s account
of the discovery of dyscalculia brought on an acute attack of my condition
dysbelievia: an inability to credit what academics will do to try to continue
their research funding.

I dread Nigel's report of the discovery of a
genetic basis for dyscalculia, since I am sure that this will induce a massive
attack and may even require the emergency treatment of reading something by
Oliver Sacks.

Dr
David B. Cook,
Department of Chemistry, University of Sheffield

The young life of your bending author lay in ruins because
of a series of then unidentified diseases. There was the inability to remember
dates (distensixtysixia), the inability to draw (disleonardia) and complete
confusion about the characteristics of different countries of the world (dislocatia).
In those evil days you did not get the necessary therapy, you got detention.

Discalculia, which by its etymology ought to mean the
inability to get a little stoned, is a good example of a new fad arising from
more than one form of fallacy. As we observed last
month, the official mind cannot cope with the Sorites Paradox. In any field
of human activity individuals reveal a whole continuous spectrum of abilities.
Only in the official mind must a line be drawn, with part of the population on
one side of it and the rest on the other. It is also a classical example of WIDIMITWEED.

This time of year is a productive one for the likes of our
old friend Nigel (thousands to die) Hawkes, for it is when the British
Association for the Advancement of Science meeting follows that of the British
Psychological Association; enough nutty professor stories to fill a desperate
journalist’s notebook ten times over

The BBC tells
us that “Scientists believe the position in which a person goes to
sleep provides an important clue about the kind of person they are. Professor
Chris Idzikowski, director of the Sleep Assessment and Advisory Service, has
analysed six common sleeping positions - and found that each is linked to a
particular personality type.”

Dr Raven Idiotski, Professor of Paper Doilies at the Metropolitan University
of Nether Wallop, believes that people’s choice of paper doily patterns gives
an important clue to their personality disorders, and he has the research grants
to prove it.

MIDDLE-class
Britain is developing a “rip-off morality” in which small acts of fraud are
seen as inevitable and acceptable, according to social scientists……

Apparently as many as 34% of us are so mired in a morass of
anti-social evil that we have actually paid cash in hand to avoid taxation.

In the old days, robber barons would extort money from the
local population in order to maintain their private armies. The modern
equivalents, such as Gordon (means-test) Brown, claim legitimacy for similar
tactics through being members of the elective dictatorship that we like to call
Government. Other bad finance ministers (the names Healy and Howe come to mind)
have come near to complete destruction of the economy, but the black market has
been one of the things that kept it alive, as it did in the post-war age of
austerity. It is bad taxation as much as anything else that has corrupted the
most honest nation of earth. The Establishment mind, which is shared by most
social scientists, sees thing differently.

Some of us see something rather splendid in the resistance
being shown by pensioners. Rather than submit to enslavement by the bureaucratic
army, for which they are forced to pay, many of them are offering their much
sought after skills on a cash basis. If you want a repair or maintenance job
done properly and cheaply, find a pensioner.

All hail to these senile delinquents. As Frank Field MP
pointed out in an article in the Daily Mail (September 17), many of them
have their lives made misery by hoards of out-of-control children. The very same
social scientists who berate the evil crime-ridden middle classes have contributed
to the creation of this class of lawless young untouchables, who go about their
destructive business safe in the knowledge that anyone who tries to stop them is
likely to end up in prison.

It all makes one feel like the man who tried to join the
Paranoids Society, but they would not tell him where the meetings were.

Meanwhile back at the
inquisition

We have had occasion to pay tribute to Professor Colin
Blakemore both in the book of the site and in the March 2001 page (see Professors
of panic strike again). He makes a contribution to scientific debate on
the same page as the middle class crime story in a piece entitled Flawed
study shakes faith in journal. It appears that a scientist at John Hopkins
University in Baltimore published in the journal Science a paper linking
the drug Ecstacy to Parkinson's disease. He found he had made an error, due to
the mislabelling of phials, and the journal published a withdrawal of the paper.
A bit shaming, but it sounds as though everyone behaved properly.

Not good enough for Blakemore, though. He raised the issue
at the BA meeting, suggesting that the paper had been rushed through the
refereeing process in order to influence legislation passing through Congress.
Now this is a valid point and we have often remarked on the conjunction between
various papers and meetings about global warming etc., but such criticism comes
ill from someone who has promoted such scares as the mobile phone one.

His suggestion that referees should have picked up such a
flaw is a ludicrous one. Refereeing is an onerous burden that is borne by anyone
who has established any sort of reputation in a given field of science. Even the
most zealous referee is unlikely to pick up such an error. So one is led to
wonder why an implicit attack on ecstasy should so excite the professor and
whether he would be so incensed if the target has been something politically
incorrect, like tobacco. The latter demon got its requisite airing
at the meeting as, of course, did global warming.

If you click the last link, don't miss the piece about
visitors to the Victoria and Albert museum being in danger because of mercury
salts in old hats. Not only hatters are mad.

Footnote: apologies to non-British
readers for being unaware of the extended tariff barrier thrown up by Times
Newspapers, which makes their links an expensive pastime. The item was
actually a fine example of a nutty professor story, suggesting that old hats
once treated with mercury posed a danger to visitors and staff. Mercury, of
course, has a very low vapour pressure, which makes it useful in the
laboratory, but relatively harmless. Some of us oldies used to play with it as
kids. Have they considered the dangers of exhalations from visitors whose mouths
are full of amalgam?The Times and Sunday Times are among the finest UK sources of
numbers worth watching, so it is a pity that the more creative flights of the
likes of <names removed>

Bill Kinney adds - It is true that no referee should be expected to
pick out

laboratory errors that upset the data. In this
case,however, the data was so obviously in error that
questionsshould have been raised about methodology.In the study in question, monkeys were supposedly givendoses
of the recreational drug ecstasy similar to thenormal
recreational doses. 40% of them died as a result.

Thousands of people take this drug at doses supposed

similar
to those used in the study every day, and themortality
rate is nowhere near 40%.This is an example of basic
innumeracy, not poor referee process.

Novacane

The only thing predictable about the weather is the
regularity with which eco-theologians will seize upon any extreme to promote
their scares. Number watcher Sandford Ward of Toronto, draws attention to the
claims of one of Canada’s leading scaremongers, one of many to ride on the
back of Isabel. In a fine example of the fallacy argumentum
ad ignorantiam, our expert delivers the following powerful message:

"We really don't know what is going to
happen to hurricane frequency under warming climate, although the risk of
intense ones, very intense ones, may go up," he said.

In assessing the direness of this threat, note that storm
names did not begin until 1950. The Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 killed 50
people in the USA, but this death toll much below the 600 of a similar 1938
hurricane, which hit Long Island and New England without warning.

Meanwhile, back in the
real world

Tears were shed on our Wiltshire allotments on the first
day of autumn. To add to the injury of losing our hardy winter crops with a
frost of –10oC early in the year, we have now have the insult of
losing all our tender crops months before their time with a hard frost, an event
unknown in living memory.

The Times let Philip Stott loose again, with a
piece based on the fact that Boscombe Down, also in famously mild Wiltshire,
had a temperature of –1oC. What do the editors of The Times
think they are doing?All that
ratchet reporting of warm weather this summer undone by publishing a record that
was supposed to be kept secret!

We are now considering a
demonstration of the sort proposed by Miceal O’Ronain, using the sign he
suggested back in February (see Global glitch):

What Do We Want?
Global Warming!
When Do We Want It?
Now!

The Italian job – a
classic

We for a certainty are not the first
Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled
Their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed
Whatever brute and blackguard made the world.
Housman

Two weeks after our FAQ on power
cuts was posted, up came the Italians with an
example that nicely illustrated many of the points made.

The two requirements for network resilience, spare capacity
and interconnectivity, were glaringly unmet. The Italians, as the British seem
about to do, relied on the more sagacious French to make up for their deficient
power planning. As a result a significant proportion of the total power came
through one branch of the network. When this branch failed, a cascading fault
occurred. Italian ministers are now shutting the stable door after the horse has
bolted by authorising twenty new power stations. Following a referendum, Italy
had banned nuclear power, the ideal source to serve the base load.

It is all so predictable! Italy was lucky this time. It was
not a bitterly cold day and the power was restored relatively quickly; otherwise
there would have been many deaths. It takes years to build a power station, so
they will remain vulnerable. There have now been cuts in the USA, Denmark,
Sweden, England and Italy. It seems to be a universal phenomenon: politicians
who are purblind to the obvious and too pusillanimous to stand up to
eco-theologians who are determined on a return to the Stone Age.

Number of the month 3.5
million

It is appropriate that the scandal that finally surfaced
from that morass seething with corruption and fraud known as the EU should
involve the Orwellian-sounding Eurostat.
The abuse of statistics is one of the features of the EU that has been
repeatedly highlighted in these pages. This particular bit of the organisation
is charged with buying and selling statistical information.

Reports on the new
scandal, only four years after the downfall of the Santer Commission in a
fog of falsification, were not made public but presented to MEPs in a
closed session. They revealed that taxpayers' money had been used to pay for
perks and freebies, including a riding club, a volleyball team, extravagant
dinners, and trips to New York and the Bahamas.

Heroic whistle-blower, the European Commission's former
chief accountant, Marta Andreasen, launched a scathing
attack on Romano Prodi, the commission's president, after last week's
confirmation of widespread financial wrongdoing at Eurostat, the EU's statistics
agency.

European Commission President Romano Prodi responded by claiming
that there is no need for any senior members of his team to resign. How
brazen can you get? In comparison, the likes of Enron are pure as the driven
snow.

The amount missing from funds extorted from European
taxpayers, due to this one fraud among many, is at least £3.5 million.
How much money is being misappropriated over the whole operation is anyone's
guess, to say nothing of the take that is "legitimate".

The venal and incompetent authorities within the EU are
driving a whole continent into bankruptcy. Mad Margo alone is destroying industries
and exporting jobs on a grand scale. The Central Bank is deflating the
continental economy into decline, to such an extent that some countries, notably
the once proudly successful Germany, could be driven into political instability
of an ominous kind.

Yet eastern European countries are queuing up to join this
little lot.